- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will starting offering home testing kits for Seattle area residents to detect the COVID-19
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will starting offering home testing kits for Seattle area residents to detect the COVID-19 (coronavirus) over the next few weeks. And in order to help public agencies detect coronavirus in the King and Snohomish counties, the Foundation will provide $5 million in funds.
People who believe they are infected can fill out a questionnaire and request a test kit if the symptoms line up with the illness from the coronavirus. From there, the kits will be delivered within 2 hours. And the kits will include nose swabs. After the sample is taken, it will be sent to a lab at the University of Washington to be tested.
In February, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had committed up to $100 million to help fight off the coronavirus.
“Early detection plays an essential role in helping public health authorities identify and treat people with COVID-19, take steps to safely isolate them and reduce transmission within the community,” said Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman. “The Gates Foundation deeply appreciates the efforts that local, state, and federal public health authorities have invested in responding to this outbreak, and we are eager to contribute our knowledge and resources to the effort.”
The coronavirus symptoms include fevers, coughs, and difficulty breathing. And some of the symptoms may not start surfacing for as long as 14 days.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is collaborating with the Public Health-Seattle & King County, the Washington State Department of Health, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help enhance their capacity for detecting and treating the coronavirus. And part of the effort involves exploring how the resources of the Seattle Flu Study could be pivoted toward emergency efforts to monitor and respond to COVID-19.
The Seattle Flu Study was originally designed for creating a community-wide network for detecting infectious disease outbreaks. And it explores innovative new ways for tracking the spread of viruses across a large urban area using methods including rapid virus genetic sequencing and mapping chains of transmission.
This study is being led by the Brotman Baty Institute in collaboration with UW Medicine, The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Children’s. And it was launched in 2018 and received over $20 million in funding support from Gates Ventures (the private office of Bill Gates). Plus it operates with technical guidance from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and local and national public health authorities.
“The COVID-19 epidemic reminds us that infectious disease respects no boundaries, and no community is immune to the threat of a global pandemic,” added Suzman. “We can, however, take steps to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in Seattle and around the world, and we are ready to support these efforts here in our home community.”
